Ask HN: Do I have a right to know who gave me a bad reference?
I no longer have any interest in the position but a very positive process came to an abrupt halt and excuse relayed to me via headhunter was that one of my references had provided a mixed reference.
Before giving references I checked with each and explicitly asked (simply as a matter of form) if they are willing to be a reference and provide positive feedback.
All said of course, and one is a friend. I have asked the company, making it clear that I have no further interest (after all, I was interviewing them as well) but they are refusing to let me know which of my references provided them with the negative feedback. Given that they relayed this to the agency (from whom I heard the news) this has also obviously affected my standing with them and other leads with them have all gone silent.
What are my rights here? I simply want to know who is the snake so I can avoid them.
Thanks hn.
63 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 120 ms ] threadAs far as your approach, telling a company you have no interest in them doesn't increase their incentive to basically do you a favor. Most companies will take "I'm not interested in working for you" as a bit of an insult to the company, so leadership isn't likely to go out of their way to help you once you've said that (regardless of the other circumstances you've described). It comes across as sour grapes at this point.
It sucks, but I think you need to move on from this one.
Let it go. You've stated elsewhere you nearly damaged a friendship over this. Don't go full Don Quixote.
what do you mean exactly by "done right"? Appreciate the social engineering tip!
I would just bring up that you had the interview with the recruiter, but weren't able to move forward in the process. If they're indeed a friend--or anyone you're close to professionally--they'll probably ask why, and that point you tell them what you've told us, and just see how they react.
If they don't ask why or have any interest in caring why you didn't get the position, that might be a red flag.
1. If he denies receiving the call, that's him.
2. If he becomes unfomfortable that's likely him, but you need more information.
3. If you receive any other answer, press on.
"Yeah, the recruiter gave me a run down on what everybody said so far..." Now wait. See if that elicits anything. A change of topic without answering would be the typical "poor man's" lie.
If there's no obvious indication, you're now in a position to ask "informational" questions. First, restore their impression of anonymity. Slip in, "Yeah, but the reviews weren't matched up with names." If there's an obvious sign of relief, that's likely your person.
"Do you remember what questions they asked, by any chance. A friend asked me to give her a reference, and I want to avoid any potholes." You can circle around the topic like that for a few questions. A typical honest person will quickly become bored by the topic. A dishonest person will politely, and fully give as many answers to your questions as you want.
That's a start. Try to ask this face to face. Trust your instincts here, not your reason.
Remember your brain has a tremendously complicated apparatus for detecting lies. But this apparatus operates subconsciously. To utilize it, you'll have to become comfortable with observing your own responses. Does something "seem" off?
Another useful tactic is to simply ask twice. Lies are hard to remember, and they shift over time to explain away new evidence. The truth remains constant.
Remember, this doesn't have to be perfect. You're really just trying to probabilistically improve the chance that you successfully eliminate the bad reference.
To be honest, however, I doubt the person even realizes that their reference sunk you. As others have suggested, it was probably an accidentally lukewarm, "Oh yes, I can confirm so-and-so worked here. He's a hard worker, and he has my recommendation." That's pretty much the boilerplate HR reference, for the exact reason of avoiding liability.
I wouldn't even bother with social engineering. You're more likely to damage your social network than gain anything of use.
Pick yourself up, find another gig, use different references, and move on.
Remember, you're in one of the most in demand fields in the economy. Relax and find someplace that doesn't ghost you over a hiccup.
After starting the conversation and discussing other things about the job the refs may confess what they did say. It may not be anything that they think was bad ("What? I just mentioned that you get high at lunch occasionally. No big deal- lots of people do.") in which case you can have a calm discussion about what to say next time ("ummm, maybe leave that bit out...").
But honestly, this part worries me:
I nearly damaged that relationship yesterday in course of asking
I'm trying to imagine that conversation. If you an aggressive, emotional person then I'm imagining, then it may not have been just one reference. It may be something that came through in their conversations with everybody, including you. You may need to chill a little in general- and work on your 'people skills.' If you are the "brutally honest" type, for example, you may face this problem again if don't learn how to get along. Learn how to make people feel good about themselves rather than bad and you'll get farther.
So possibly what happened is that your reference said something along the lines of "I worked with anonnystate and he came on time and completed his work". Which sounds good to you, but to a potential employer, this is pretty mediocre and might indicate that the reference is hiding something. If your friend doesn't know how to give a real reference, then this may be the case.
I just wouldn't bother - expect 9 out of 10 interview to fail anyway.
2. There is what the reference said. What the firm told told the headhunter and what the headhunter said. The information is third hand.
3. If there were multiple channels into the firm, then information could have come from one of their networks independently of the provided references.
4. Because the list of past employers are as much references as personal references, it could have been anyone at a former employer who was indifferent and contact could have been outside formal HR channels.
5. The headhunter could have formed the opinion on their own and withdrawn your candidacy. The headhunter could have been unable to reach favorable terms with the company regarding their compensation. Someone more appealing to the headhunter could have come along. The job might not really exist. It might have been filled.
Sure, not getting a job kinda sucks. It's probably not worth the risk of collateral damage due to insufficient or inaccurate information. Or both.
Good luck.
Meaning most companies use references to disqualify and that the reference checker may not ask followup questions to understand the context of the questionable information. That is not your problem, its the companies problem and they are missing great talent.
For example I always ask a references this question. "Everyone has something they can improve on what can this candidates improve on?"
Yesterday i received feedback on this question that was questionable. "The response was that you need to help the candidate to stay focus."
HMMMMM that's not good, I said to my self is this +/- I need to explore more. I asked some follow up questions and I found out that the candidates requested help to fix a new AppSec too. The request was not followed up on by the reference in a timely fashion and the candidate fixed the tool's code to make it work : )
Long story short, I was able to gather from this reference that it was the references' responsibility not to waste this candidates time. So for the next employer, he said its important to respond quickly to his needs so you don't waste valuable Building, Breaking and Defending AppSec time. Because he is smart of enough to find and fix anything.
So in essence, if I took what the reference at face value with out seeking to understand this would have been a mixed reference. Now I am able to educated the new hiring prospects on this feedback.
Hn, you can only do so much so you might change up your references a bit to be safe but there is a lot out of yours and their control.
Sorry and have a great weekend!
Joel @doyouidentify
Though usually the reference is "grilled" a bit into several aspects, it's not usually a matter of "good or not good"
Whether a reference is good, bad, or mixed is entirely in the eye of the interviewer/reference checker. The interviewer could have asked some question like "tell me about a time @anonnystate went above and beyond in this role" and your reference proceeds to tell about the time you left an after hours party to fix the thing that broke the site. In your reference's mind that showed dedication. In the interviewer's mind you worked on code while partying.
They could have asked your references to describe your role, if it doesn't match up with what you claimed your role to be: mixed reference.
And it's entirely possible that the people you asked to be your references didn't want to say no, precisely to avoid the followup question of why.
All kinds of crazy stuff can go down in interviews and unless it's part of a trend, you just have to chalk it up to their loss. I had an interview where the hiring manager came back with lots of praise and offer forthcoming news, turn into "team could not reach consensus" in under 24 hours. People in interviews will come up with all sorts of crazy reasons not to proceed. Sometimes it's a turf war, sometimes it's thinking they need to protect themselves, sometimes it's some innocuous occurrence in the interview that sows enough doubt to not proceed. Your career is way more than the few incidents that will occur over it that make no sense, so I'd just not worry about it for now. More bad could come from trying to McCarthy your reference network than good based on one weird interview scenario :-).
What is even a "mixed" reference? I mean, what a lame excuse. It is enough to say "he has great engineering abilities and some good accounting" to say that it is "mixed"...
If youre unsure about any of the referees you're using, set up a fake opportunty via friends and spoofed emails etc. Get real references, which of course are sent to you, or relayed if a friend phones "as a headhunter/employer".
There's also a distinct possiblilty that the referee had been hassled at a bad moment by the headhunter (not a species reknowned for consideration after all). The mixed part may have stemmed from this. Or perhaps he didn't cooperate in sharing leads at his current location. It might have been poor wording or misunderstanding either a question or answer rather than a real issue.
In short, you'll never know, but you can arm yourself better for next time.
It's certainly no more dishonest than the hundreds of agents who try to insist on references before interviews - because they're using them for lead generation.
If it's an ex-employer, as many are, it's not unheard of for them to give minimal or less than glowing reference simply because theyre still unhappy you left and nothing to do with your skills and personality.
To use a referee without being as sure you're using the best names from the possibles is foolish.
Anyways, even if legitimate, I always assume most references are friends, friends-of-friends, or friends of family, or something making the reference equally meaningless, anyways.
I know very well of a situation that I think most people would not believe. A well-established software company hired someone with excellent, glowing references from real people at one of the largest software companies in the world. This was for a senior QA position. After months, it came to light that the person did not even have the capability to tell you if the code they were looking at was javascript, C# or VB code. They just had never done any coding or technical work in their career. So granted, during the hiring process there was almost no consideration of testing their coding knowledge because the person wasn't really hired to write any code, and the company doing the hiring was unbelievably incompetent; but even still, it was just amazing this happened.
Not the same thing but pretty close: I read an article, and I can't find it now, but I think it was UC Berkeley published something saying that reference quality for admitted students was a meaningless or near-meaningless predictor of academic success at their institution.
I assume the same in the working world, unless I personally know the reference.
the whole system works much better when everyone is as well informed as possible.
If you want to invest time into it, round robin applications. For example, if you need 3 references per application, get 4 then cycle them in sets of 3 each time. Or find an application that requires only 2 references and split sets. Eventually you will have enough data to know who the bad reference came from. This is time consuming, but will net you your answer.
The truth is, your options are drop all the references you used, even the ones you think are solid, or find out who the lame duck is and delete them.
Legally, no one can say anything because it opens them up to a lawsuit, so stop chasing that avenue unless you know them personally.
Good luck!
In NY this is becoming a lame way to turn someone down, knowing that the reason will draw attention away from the company while the actual reason has nothing to do with references.
As the OP notes, this killed off the other leads the agency was giving him. If that is what happened, this company might have caused him serious professional & financial harm. There's probably nothing to do there but if companies are doing this, it should become well known as part of the reference check on them.
Call (do NOT email) each of your references and state the situation: "Hey Ms. Reference, I recently got feedback from one of my job applications that a reference check did not go as well as I expected. Given that I use you as a reference in these situations, I wanted to check in to make sure that if you had any feedback on my past performance or had any advice on how to make a reference check go smoothly, I'd appreciate it."
A reference should not accept to be a reference if they will give bad feedback.
I do agree with folks here who are saying this might not be the real reason for the turndown, but definitely approach your references if you are concerned.
EDIT: to answer your question directly you really don't have much of a right here. This is all lovey-dovey-fuzzy human stuff. I doubt your potential employer will share the feedback, nor would I even ask. If anything, ask for general feedback on what was said or what could have been done better by you.
What is a reference for, then? A future employer wants an honest view on the candidate.
Accepting to be a reference when being requested by an applicant assumes you'll be honest but also courteous and positive.
In some situations, a potential employer might require to speak with a specific individual who you might not have asked to be a reference. In that situation, the social contract above doesn't apply.
Asking the no-longer-potential employer or your current references about it is unlikely to do any good. Using different references might, but then again maybe not. You probably already know what negatives might have come up in a conversation with people who've worked with you. If those are affecting your career development, the solution should be obvious.
Do you mean legally? Or something else?
One of my old employers had a very strict policy of only issuing a standard reference which was basically to confirm I worked there, my job title and my start/finish dates. Staff and managers were expressly forbidden from giving references - they had to refer all requests to HR.
I had a job offer withdrawn as a result of this. The potential employer asked specific questions in their reference request and my old employer refused to answer then - instead giving them their standard form reference. Not my fault, and nothing I could do about it.
It could be that someone who generally thinks highly of you gave a glowing reference, but once the headhunter or hiring manager started digging into specifics, the person softened, hesitated, or otherwise answered in a way that the company was not looking for. It's possible the reference was unaware that what he/she said was interpreted in a mixed or negative light by the company.
> I have asked the company ... but they are refusing to let me know which of my references provided them with the negative feedback.
Of course they are, because it's none of your business. You do not have a legal right to the information.
> What are my rights here?
You have the right to continue applying and to use different people for references.
> I simply want to know who is the snake
Based on your comments in this thread, the entitlement, the threat of lawsuits, and calling someone a snake for giving you a bad reference, it seems perfectly reasonable that someone would have given a bad reference.